
SVG Sit-Down: At IBC 2022, Vizrt Team Reflects on the Company's Transformation Since 2019 The exhibit touted cloud developments, Engine 5, and NDI version 5.5 By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, September 19, 2022 - 11:26 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Vizrt was one of the companies that showed up at IBC transformed since IBC 2019. The acquisition of NDI, which was fresh in 2019, is now fully integrated and baked into the Vizrt environment; the cloud and virtualized tools continue to gain interest from customers; and the company even announced acquisition of Flowics at the show. During the show, SVG caught up with four members of the Vizrt team: TJ Akhtar, VP, product management, Vizrt; Suso Carrillo, NDI marketing lead, Vizrt Group; Amisa Saari-Stout, communications specialist, Vizrt; and Ulrich Voigt, VP, product management, Vizrt Cloud Solutions, Vizrt. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.
(l-to-r) Vizrt's Suso Carillo; Ulrich Voight, Amasi Saari-Stout, and TJ Akhtar at IBC last week.
What are the big storylines for Vizrt at IBC 2022?
Akhtar: From a group perspective, there are a lot of new things. At NAB, we talked a lot about the cloud piece and new developments on the Viz Engine side as well as NDI. At our Vizrt days, we had a preview of two big things: the cloud piece and the release of Viz Engine 5. Fast forward a few more months, and we now have NDI version 5.5 and then the acquisition of Flowics in the past few days. So it has been a very busy period for us.
Can you give us an update on the Vizrt engine?
Akhtar: A couple of the big pieces of Engine 5. We rewrote the integration with Unreal Engine 5, which was released earlier this year. That comes with a lot of new features like Lumen for the lighting piece, and you can build your own virtual world and mass scale with Nanite [the virtualized geometry system in version 5]. We want to utilize all those features and rebuild our integration from the ground up so the features can be used natively, including the retracing. We can control from Viz Engine and our control application pretty much every single element as part of an Unreal Scene.
On top of that, we also added asset management of Unreal Engine Scenes, which can be multiple gigs. We've added support for Unreal within our Graphics Hub, which is a massive piece and gives redundancy when collaborating and security of your traffic files.
We also have adaptive graphics for adaptive storytelling where content is delivered on multiple platforms and over multiple target points. And we've actually passed the inflection point where consumption is on digital vs. linear broadcast, so we want to make it easier for broadcasters to create graphics that can be used and played out via multiple sources and whether it is 16:9 or 9:16 for TikTok or square for Instagram and Facebook. Adaptive graphics enables all of that, and our broadcast partners can design a graphic once and use it multiple times without having to duplicate the design.
Let's talk NDI 5.5. What's new, and what does it mean to the marketplace?
Carrillo: The key point with NDI 5.5 is that the focus is on NDI Tools, which is a suite of free tools that have features like multi-audio management, an NDI switcher, and some other capabilities.
NDI now has a lot of flexibility, and that's why we decided to improve the features so that everybody can have a multichannel-audio workflow.
Akhtar: Just to add to that: one of the benefits of NDI 5.5 as part of Viz Engine is the insertion of metadata within the NDI stream. That enables the graphics piece to do multi-camera remote production purely on NDI. That is enabled by new features that will be coming in a later release of NDI. When it comes to live production, the improvements move us towards live production in the cloud.
Let's talk about the cloud. Vizrt has been doing virtualized hardware for a long time. How does that help with customers moving production to the cloud?
Voigt: It's an easy step for us to go into the cloud and with some optimizations. The first step is that all our products are now running in the cloud so you can do Engine in the cloud, you can do switching, you can do replay, you can do sport analysis and even virtual ad overlays. And NDI is the fabric to make it possible and combine with on-premises equipment. For sports analysis, we can now get live camera feeds from the stadium and then do all the analysis and illustration creation in the cloud live and then get the signal back into the production.
The trick is, how do you make that accessible to the general user without the need for cloud engineers who are focused on security and the virtual environment? That is one reason we developed a cloud deployment platform that can set up the infrastructure and Vizrt tools virtually within 15 minutes after a template is selected for a type of production. All the user needs to do is connect to it, and they can do their work. We can still do remote production with hardware set up in two locations, but, with the cloud, you can build the whole production gallery in a matter of minutes by just selecting a template. Then the team has full control and can tweak it.
But key is that the cloud is just another infrastructure; it's not another product. And that makes it seamless: the user can have half of it in the cloud and half of it in the OB van. They can connect together and have the same workflow and create graphics and use them everywhere. Or they can create a show rundown in Mozart to automate the show in the cloud or in hardware.
The remote accessibility of NDI gives you a lot of new workflow possibilities. A remote commentator can use free NDI tools and NDI bridge to connect to the cloud, and everything is based on current workflows, so they don't need a cloud-enginee
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
22/05/2026
Germany's Magenta TV, which will have 44 exclusive FIFA World Cup match broa...
22/05/2026
DAZN, the world's leading sports entertainment platform, has acquired global broadcast rights to the International Federation of American Football's ( I...
22/05/2026
ATHLOS, the all-women's professional track and field league, has announced i...
22/05/2026
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) today announced that the 47th Annual Sports Emmy Awards and the 47th Annual News & Documentary Emmy A...
22/05/2026
Wooden Camera today announced the release of new accessories for the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive. The new lineup includes a redesigned Top Plate and Side Rai...
22/05/2026
YES Network and OTT Advisors have announced a sixth consecutive season of their streaming partnership, continuing their collaboration on the Gotham app. OTT Adv...
22/05/2026
NESN, New England's premier sports network, will again turn its camera to Fe...
22/05/2026
Dale Pro Audio is hosting an RF over Fiber Livestream Webinar on May 28 from 1-2:30 pm EST. With major sporting events and large-scale productions putting incre...
22/05/2026
Audio-Technica has announced key leadership appointments designed to further strengthen its sales organization and drive continued growth across the Americas. M...
22/05/2026
After nearly four decades shaping the global combat sports landscape, Scott Coker has announced a powerful return as he looks to build a new international mixed...
22/05/2026
Skyline Communications, the company behind the globally deployed DataMiner xOps platform, today announced the launch of xOps Vanguard Runway, a strategic accele...
22/05/2026
For the fully onsite production, 30 cameras - including a SkyCam and Megalodon - will capture the action in Texas
One of the world's biggest rodeo producti...
22/05/2026
Leading Argentina-based sports media company Torneos y Competencias S.A. has modernized its playout operations, implementing a fully redundant, multichannel env...
22/05/2026
As the 2026 Major League Pickleball season kicks off this weekend in Dallas, it ...
22/05/2026
Shure has become a minority investor in Edge Sound Research, a start-up company that is developing new experiential audio technologies that redefine how many au...
22/05/2026
In advance of this year's Sports Emmy Awards, SVG is taking a deep dive into...
22/05/2026
The National Hockey League (NHL) and Amazon Music announced that GRAMMY Award-winning superstar Jelly Roll will provide the official theme song of the 2026 Stan...
22/05/2026
David Pogue will keynote SVV Summer Camp and discuss Apple at 50: How the World...
22/05/2026
In its second year as rightsholder, FOX Sports goes bigger across the board for ...
22/05/2026
Heading into FOX Sports' second Indianapolis 500, Lead Director Mitch Riggin...
22/05/2026
At our 2026 Investor Day, we shared an inside look at the rebuild of our advertising business. This pivot to our own purpose-built platform is already driving s...
22/05/2026
Podcasting on Spotify continues to grow, and so do the ways listeners engage with it. At Investor Day 2026, we shared how we're building the next chapter of...
22/05/2026
Limited-time collections now available
Restoration experts CEDAR Audio have recently launched a new line of Icons plug-ins that make their powerful processo...
22/05/2026
Three new classics join Model Pass line-up
Boss' PX-1 Plugout Pedal offers an innovative approach to guitar pedals, providing users with a hardware stom...
22/05/2026
At its Meitingen site, SGL Carbon has implemented two key projects to further de...
22/05/2026
Statement regarding 2026 National NAIDOC Lifetime Achievement Award for the late...
22/05/2026
Latest data reveals steady distributor rankings, a seasonal shift toward digital...
22/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/05/2026
Amagi Media Labs Limited (NSE: AMAGI, BSE: 544679), a cloud-native SaaS platform providing AI-enabled solutions to global media and entertainment companies, tod...
22/05/2026
An nima Post Relies on Cintel to Revive Classic Mexican Films
Brie Clayton May 22, 2026
0 Comments
Film scanner and DaVinci Resolve Studio help manage...
22/05/2026
Boris FX Sapphire Adds Optical Beauty and Hypnotic Textures
Jessie Electa Petrov May 22, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release introduces advanced defocu...
22/05/2026
Deployment Preserves Trusted Workflows While Enabling a Path to UHD and SMPTE ST 2110
Leading Argentina-based sports media company Torneos y Competencias S.A....
22/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/05/2026
Back to All News
Ex-Husband, Current Husband, One Wild Rescue: Korean Action Co...
22/05/2026
Catch the latest in Irish music live from venues such as Whelan's, R is n Du...
21/05/2026
Game Creek Video Columbia and Celtic, NEP Supershooter 8 will house onsite produ...
21/05/2026
Freshly graduated, this upstart producer, director, and camera operator is already working as an AP on videoboard shows for the Philadelphia Phillies
In the li...
21/05/2026
Media Links has announced a channel partnership with Clearcast Asia, a broadcast...
21/05/2026
SiriusXM and NASCAR have announced a multi-year renewal of their broadcasting agreement. SiriusXM will continue to carry live broadcasts of every NASCAR Cup Ser...
21/05/2026
Audio-Technica held a demonstration event at its Technica House location in New ...
21/05/2026
Ateme has announced that RTL Deutschland has selected Ateme's software-based...
21/05/2026
LiveU has announced that BCC Live deployed the LU900Q intelligent production unit for the first time during the 2026 Memorial Hermann IRONMAN Texas North Americ...
21/05/2026
ATSC has announced that Mark Aitken, President of ONE Media and Senior VP of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, will receive the 2026 Mark Richer ...
21/05/2026
BBright has published a technical analysis of the Media eXchange Layer (MXL), de...